HARD LESSONS in AMERICA Henry Sicade’S History of Puyallup Indian School, 1860 to 1920 Edited and with an Introduction by Cary C

WashingtonHistory.org HARD LESSONS IN AMERICA Henry Sicade’s History of Puyallup Indian School, 1860 to 1920 Edited and with an Introduction by Cary C. Collins Columbia The Magazine of Northwest History, Winter 2000-01: Vol. 14, No. 4 For 60 years Puyallup Indian School provided the native peoples of Puget Sound, western Washington, and the Pacific Northwest with singular opportunities in education. During that period, American attempts to assimilate the nation's Indian population reached their bare-knuckled zenith. The school thus experienced a shifting identity but an unshakable purpose. Situated on the Puyallup Indian Reservation in Tacoma and operated under the paternal hand of the United States government, the institution opened as a day school in 1860. Subsequent expansions, the first in 1873 and another in 1898, reflected ongoing changes in the school's status to reservation boarding school and then off-reservation boarding school. Through each manifestation, however, the objective remained the same: to saturate Indian children in the culture and ideals of the dominant American society. Puyallup Indian School embodied a six-decade experiment in American policies of forced assimilation. Henry Sicade (1866-1938) knew those policies intimately. A great-nephew of Chief Leschi of the Nisqually tribe and a grandson of Chief Stann of the Puyallup tribe, he enrolled in Puyallup Day School in January 1873, just a month shy of his seventh birthday. He continued as a student for over seven years—until February 1880—before transferring to a new off-reservation boarding school in Forest Grove, Oregon. A year at Forest Grove Indian School (now Chemawa Indian School in Salem) preceded another three at adjacent Pacific University, academic experiences that he later applied to optimal effect. Sicade served on both the Puyallup Tribal Council (for 46 years) and the Fife City Council, and he helped found the Fife Public School System, holding the position of director. The deficiencies and problems that plagued Puyallup Indian School throughout so much of its history eventually prompted Sicade and other Puyallup leaders to turn elsewhere in looking for education for their children. In 1903 Sicade and his friend William Wilton played a key role in establishing, on their reservation at Fife, a public school that became heavily populated by Puyallup tribal members. That success—swelling enrollments soon expanded the facility from a one-room schoolhouse to a large two-story building— conspired to the detriment of Puyallup Indian School, and in June 1908 the Office of Indian Affairs decided to terminate operations. Only the spirited intervention of Francis W. Cushman, a Republican congressman from Tacoma, staved off closure. Acting on the premise that the school returned considerable economic benefits to the region, he proposed that it be made viable, a mandate that resulted in a name change in his honor; from 1910 forward, the facility was known as Cushman Indian School. Meanwhile, the federal government responded by significantly upgrading the school's physical plant to accommodate a heavier emphasis on industrial training. However, in an era punctuated by an increasing emphasis on public school attendance, that measure proved inadequate. Following several years of intermittent stoppages, the BIA permanently closed Puyallup Indian School at the conclusion of the 1920 academic year. In 1927 Sicade wrote a history of Puyallup Indian School. Startling in its revelations, his brief personal account describes an institution deeply flawed in virtually every detail. By no means a doleful story— Collins, COLUMBIA The Magazine of Northwest History, Winter 2000-01 Vol. 14, No. 4 indeed, his narrative is framed around positive observations—Sicade's history poignantly contrasts the hopes embodied in the treaty the Puyallups signed with the American government in December 1854 with the basic truth of a nation only grudgingly willing to honor the promises made in those negotiations. For many tribal members, Sicade included, the wide gulf that separated expectations from reality fomented disappointment, frustration and, ultimately, disillusionment. That which had been bargained for simply had not been received. What had been realized, among other shortcomings, included an insidious mixture of political and religious bickering among officials, tumble-down facilities, incompetent teachers (if any at all), arbitrary corporal punishments, inadequate nutrition, deficient clothing and pernicious disease. Such problems have long been recognized as defining aspects of the Indian school experience, but Sicade's vivid firsthand testimony starkly exposes the scale on which the government school system at Puyallup failed, particularly early on, to meet even the most basic needs of its students. What follows is Henry Sicade's history of Puyallup Indian School. It has been edited for clarity and readability. The original manuscript is housed in the Eells Collection, Special Collections Division, at the Washington State Historical Society Research Center. The Puyallup Indian School, what is now [1927] known as the Cushman School, was first established somewhere at or about East 27th Street, near Portland Avenue, Tacoma, Washington, in 1860. The one-room shack, built of rough lumber about 16 feet square, with one window and a door, contained a few rough benches, and to this primitive school five volunteer students, young men, came to attend each day. There was but one book for this pioneer class, no doubt some sort of a primer, and when the ambitious student had recited, he stepped out to the trail and returned to his primitive home. Each took his turn likewise. The teacher's name or where he had lived, legend does not tell, but he was a white man. This [government] day school was the result of the treaty, entered into by the Puyallups before the Indian war of 1855 and 1856, whereby this tribe insisted on two things; first, that an Indian school be established within the bounds of their land to educate their young, and second, [that the tribe] be left where they had always lived. The Puyallups flatly refused to receive or accept gifts of calico or beads, blankets and whatnot [during the negotiations], although Governor [Isaac I.] Stevens did once give a "potlatch," promising many gifts, but in reality each aborigine received but very little or none at all. The Indians held a council among themselves after this first schoolhouse was built, and to show their good faith in their demand for the education of their youth, set aside over 600 acres of their common land for the use and benefit of their school. The government, seeing the Indians determined to have a real school, built several buildings along the river bank where the Interurban crosses the Puyallup River—mostly employees quarters—in about 1863. The most conspicuous buildings were the agent's home, the day schoolhouse, the blacksmith shop, the carpenter shop and, in the midst of this group of buildings, whitewashed, stood a jail made of logs, popularly called "Skookum House." With very little excuse, for minor offenses, natives were jailed with iron balls and chains [attached] to their legs and made to sleep on the floor on straw and to live on bread and water for diet. A young Indian, Jack by name, volunteered to go to school but was so handy with tools that he was put in the blacksmith shop and became famed as a blacksmith, and pioneers from everywhere came to have their work done free of charge. Jack never saw the inside of the 2 Collins, COLUMBIA The Magazine of Northwest History, Winter 2000-01 Vol. 14, No. 4 schoolroom and was known as "Chickman Jack," Iron Jack. Thus the shop made for the Indians became a shop for the white settlers. After the Civil War of 1861 to 1865, General R. H. Milroy was sent west to take charge of the Indians, with headquarters at Olympia, Washington. Byron Barlow was the [Puyallup] subagent and resided on the school grounds. A dozen and possibly 15 students attended the day school; their hours were quite short and they had long recesses. There are now but three living who attended this school. Owing to the low nature of the school grounds—the river often overflowing its banks—the school usually could not be reached for a long period. About 1873 Reverend George W. Sloan came to build up a permanent school at the present site among the tall timbers and gullies, where deer, bears and all kinds of game roamed at will. Chief Thomas Stolyer had cleared and cultivated what is now the school garden tract, established a growing orchard where the superintendent's house stands, and built a lumber one-and-one-half-story house with a large fireplace and a large barn made of logs, well stocked. He decided to give up his home and give to the struggling school his land so that this school could have its own garden land. The first building, made of rough lumber, was two stories high. The first floor was used for a schoolroom, with benches to study on; to the rear was the washroom for the boys and upstairs were their sleeping quarters. To the rear, connected by a covered porch, was the main building, built in an "L" shape. To the rear were the kitchen and storeroom; in the center was the dining room; the "L" was the headquarters of the teacher and his family; and upstairs, the girls' dormitory, which was comfortably built. The boys' quarters were very ill-built; during the cold winter seasons the boys often crawled into the straw beds to keep warm. Usually the winter seasons were so cold that it was with great difficulty that we managed to comb our hair…. The Puyallup River often froze up so teams were able to cross on the ice, and snow lay deep for weeks.

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